


What if I Weep?

by Kimi_Ichisaigosuki



Series: Doctor Who meets YouTube meets The Young Wizards Series [4]
Category: Doctor Who, Video Blogging RPF, Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: F/M, I am so ready to just post this and have it out there, It's done, JackSquared, M/M, Multi, Panic Attacks, trigger warning for that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-03
Updated: 2016-04-03
Packaged: 2018-05-30 21:05:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6440608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kimi_Ichisaigosuki/pseuds/Kimi_Ichisaigosuki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jacksepticeye goes on a journey with Jack Harkness, and the two of them learn more than they ever thought possible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What if I Weep?

**Author's Note:**

> Oh, look! More JackSquared fic!
> 
> I’ll be honest, I wasn't ever sure if I was going to finish editing this, but it’s been sitting on my hard drive for months now and it's done and I want to get it posted. The idea for this fic came from this post, which inspired the very first scene and gave me the title…  
> http://therealjacksepticeye.tumblr.com/post/136033465683/dont-blink-dude-the-angels-will-take-you  
> …but I didn’t expect it to turn into this. This is also the longest piece I’ve ever written, no contest.
> 
> Trigger warning for a somewhat graphic description of a panic attack early on. It’s rated M due to mature themes.
> 
>  
> 
> **As a disclaimer about the characters in this fic: they aren’t mine, and they ARE NOT meant to be representations of the actual people whose names they bear. I did my utmost to portray everyone and everything in the best light possible according to how the story evolved, but this is entirely a work of fiction, and should be viewed as such.**
> 
>  
> 
> Anything Doctor Who belongs to the BBC, anything recognizable from the “Young Wizards Series” belongs to Diane Duane, anything from Star Trek belongs to Star Trek, etc...

"No, no, nooooooo!" Jack flailed with his controller as he plunged to his death yet again. "Fuck you, game! Fuck you up your stupid, impossible-to-play asshole!" He let out a final shout of fury as the screen displayed his character's dismal end, and turned to look at the camera. "You know what, guys? I'm done. I am done with this game for today because I can't fuckin' concentrate ’cause of the horrible physics!” He took a moment to collect himself and grinned at the camera, though it felt a bit forced. Everything had felt forced lately.

He’d been out of sorts ever since he’d ducked into a store to escape a particularly bad spell of the perpetual rain in Ireland. The music playing over the sound system had seemed to swell suddenly as the door shut behind him, rushing through his head and sending him to his knees. And underneath it all there had been whispers, words that he could barely make out except for _in Life’s name_ over and over again, drowning everything else out until there was a blinding flash of white light that was in his head and—

—He’d come to feeling like his brain was replaced with cotton and the clerk shaking him, asking what was wrong. Jack had played it off with some stupid excuse and hurried home, feeling like his mind had been flung open and that, in the absence of the mental barriers he hadn’t even know existed, there were many different presences pushing against his mind from every angle. He’d told Signe he had a headache when she’d asked him what was wrong and gone to take a nap. When he woke up that evening, the many minds pressing against his own were still there, but now they were manageable. Like sleeping had allowed his brain to adjust to the oddly claustrophobic openness that followed the burst of light behind his eyes in the store.

Jack pushed away the memories of that day and focused on finishing the recording. “So for now, thank you guys so much for watching!" He thought he heard the floor creak behind him. "If you liked it— _Jaysus Christ!_ " He lunged to the side as a stone angel stared at him from the viewfinder of the camera, one hand outstretched towards where he had been sitting not ten seconds earlier. The Youtuber stared at the creature that could turn his life upside down with a single touch. Jack started shaking, unable to tear his eyes away from the Weeping Angel in his recording room. How the fuck did it get in? More importantly, how was he going to get away?

There was no point calling for help; Signe was out of the house shopping for a friend's birthday present, and it was unlikely that the neighbors would hear him though the soundproofing in the room. Jack's fists clenched and relaxed on the arm rests of his chair as he weighed his options through the growing fog of panic in his brain. He didn't have any mirrors in the room to trap the Angel with its own sight. More than that, he was stuck in a small, soundproofed room with the creature. Whispers crowded in on his mind, growing louder with his increasing panic. _Don’t blink don’t blink don’t-_

“Shut up!” Jack snapped at the voices. They’d been a constantly growing presence since that day, barely audible at the beginning and building into whispers just behind his ears. The voices fell silent at his shout and Jack took a deep breath, steeling himself for the only course of action.

Trying not to look away from the Angel and praying that he didn’t stumble, Jack stood up and backed towards the door. His elbow bumped a light and his eyes flickered away for a moment, allowing the Angel to turn to face him fully. Its face was twisted up in a snarl. “Fuck, fuck, fuck…” He cursed under his breath, fumbling with the latch and finally managing to crack the door open. Sweat started to bead on his forehead as he carefully stepped over the cables running to his lights. He kept his eyes locked on the Angel as he stepped into the hall; he was halfway to safety. God, what would happen if it got him? When would he end up? How long would it take people to stop looking for him?

Jack reached around the door to remove the key in the lock, hoping to trap the Angel in the room until he could...do what? He felt panic creeping up on him as the key got stuck. “Oh, come on, come on-! _Let go!_ ” The key came loose abruptly, putting him off-balance. His eyes clamped down against his will as his bangs tickled his eyelashes, and he looked up to see the Angel nearly at the door with a clawed hand outstretched to grab him. “Shit!” Jack slammed and locked the door as quickly as he could. The Youtuber raced to get the full length mirror from his and Signe's bedroom, his footsteps accompanied by a constant litany of profanity and the sound of something heavy beating against the door of his recording room. He threw open the bedroom door and tried to drag the looking glass into place before the Angel forced its way into the hall. He shoved it in front of the door as wood started to splinter and backpedaled frantically as the top half of the panel fell away. A grey, clammy-looking hand shot out through the splintered wood almost faster than Jack could follow, only to freeze and turn to stone before his gaze. Silence fell. Terrified, but unsure of how else to test if the mirror had actually caught the Angel, Jack deliberately closed his eyes.

Nothing happened. No more splintering wood, no rustling carpet or grinding stone. He opened his eyes, saw the Angel exactly as it had been, and his shoulders slumped in relief. It was trapped for the moment. But now what? There wasn’t exactly a professional Weeping Angel exterminator he could call. He paused and glanced at the stairs down to the ground floor where his wallet sat on the kitchen table.

Maybe there was someone he could call.

Jack headed downstairs into the kitchen and flipped his wallet open, a broad grin of relief splitting his face as he found a somewhat battered business card for one Jack Harkness of TORCHWOOD tucked away in one of the folds between a couple of credit cards that he never used.

In all honesty, Jack had tried to avoid thinking about the man. Every time his thoughts drifted to his brief contact with a world that defied comprehension, to the time he spent with a man from the future while trying to find his friends, he felt butterflies in his stomach and an uneasy feeling of attraction. He’d never been seriously interested in men in his life until Mark, which had been a perfectly manageable crush, thank you, and was more than happy with Signe, but something about Harkness was intoxicating. (Whispers of _power attracts power_ drifted around his thoughts like mist, and he shook his head to chase the whispers away.) Harkness was confident, handsome, competent, and no matter the situation, the air around him always seemed to be charged with sexual tension. It was distracting, and had led to more than one half-remembered dream of tangled limbs and sweat and _heat_ — Jack shook himself, a light flush dusting his cheeks. That was all those were: dreams. They were not, and would not, be reality.

Jack reached into his pocket, then felt ice creeping down his spine as he realized one crucial problem: his phone was still in the recording room with the Angel. “No, no no no…” He patted at his pockets even though he knew it was fruitless, his stomach weighed down with dread and fear. “Are you fuckin’ kidding me?!” He contemplated going upstairs to try and squeeze past the creature to get his mobile, but discarded that idea immediately; he would have to destroy the door completely in order to get into the room and around the stone statue, and he didn’t know if he could accomplish that without breaking the Angel’s line of sight to its own reflection. He paced in the kitchen, wondering if he should go and ask a neighbor to borrow their phone and risk leaving the Angel alone in the apartment, when his eyes fell on Signe’s laptop on the couch in the sitting room.

Jack felt a twinge of guilt as he grabbed the laptop and unlocked it, but reasoned that if his options were to invade his girlfriend’s privacy or get sent to who-knows-when, he’d take the option of a sincere apology and the chance to stay in his own timeline. He opened Skype and entered the number on the business card before clicking the dial button, only to be told that the number was invalid. He double-checked the number and tried again with the same results. “ _Fuck!_ ” Jack nearly threw the laptop across the room in frustration, barely-controlled panic surging up in his chest as the situation threatened to come crashing down on him. There was a monster in his recording room. His mobile, which was his best chance of contacting someone for help, might as well be on another planet. As soon as Signe set foot in the front door she would be in danger. And his only hope of maybe fixing the situation, a man he’d blackmailed into helping him the first time they’d met and who he had confusingly mixed feelings for, didn’t appear to have a working phone number. Jack grabbed the business card, about to tear it into little pieces that he would force-feed Harkness the next time he saw him, when he noticed that the front of the card had what looked like embossed backwards words bumping up under the printed information; he flipped it over and saw writing on the back.

_Hey! If you want to call me, don’t use the number on the front. That facility no longer exists. Use my personal number instead. I hope to hear from you soon._

The message was followed by a scrawled number, the handwriting messy but also somehow elegant. The words, innocuous though they were, almost appeared to promise more than they possibly could.

Jack put in the new number and breathed a sigh of relief as it went through. The phone rang for so long that he was about to give up hope when a familiar voice issued from the laptop speakers. “Jack Harkness.” Jack barely choked back a sob of relief, and Harkness paused. “Hello? Is anyone there?”

“Yes! Yes, it’s me, it’s Jack. Er, Sean. Whatever. Do you remember me? I tracked you down to help me find my friends with the Doctor-” Jack felt his mouth going a mile a minute, but couldn’t seem to stop until Harkness chuckled.

“Oh, I remember you, Jack. I have to say, I’m surprised you called. It’s been nearly six months. By now most people have either thrown themselves into this hidden world or have run as far from the truth as possible. What made you decide to pick up the phone?”

Jack could hear Harkness’s voice slipping down to a velvet drawl, and decided to cut off any attempts at seduction as brutally as possible; he didn’t have the time to question his sexuality when he was in danger. He was also feeling a bit vicious, what with a monster suddenly appearing in his home. “There’s a Weeping Angel in my apartment. It almost ambushed me while I was recording.” There was dead silence on the line that the whispers in his head filled with indistinct murmurs that almost sounded like emotions, like concern and anger mixed with professional detachment, and Jack felt panic beginning to bubble up in his chest again as the secondhand emotions washed over him. “Hello? I’d like some help here.”

“What is your location?” Harkness’s voice was cold and clinical, and Jack could hear fingers on a keyboard in the background as he rattled off his address. “Okay. I’m currently in England, but I can be at your coordinates in less than five minutes. Is there anyone else in the apartment? No? Good. I’ll be teleporting in. Is the Angel on the ground floor?”

Jack shook his head even though the gesture was useless. “No, It’s upstairs in my recording room. I locked it in and put a full length mirror in front of the door. Which it broke. It’s frozen now, stuck looking at itself.” He started bouncing his leg restlessly, a creeping paranoia crawling along his back.

Harkness let out a low whistle. “Damn. That’s probably the best thing you could have done, all things considered. Do you have a sledgehammer?”

Jack forced himself to settle as he mentally went through all the tools in the apartment. “Er, no. There’s a regular claw hammer in the toolbox, but that’s it. I’m not big on tools or anything unless I can use them to fix my computer.”

“I’ll bring my tools, then. Oh, and Jack?” A smirk crept into Harkness’s voice and he all but purred into the phone. “I’m very glad you called me.” He hung up, leaving Jack sitting on the couch with Signe’s laptop glowing in the dimness, his face bright red and an uncomfortable feeling sitting in his stomach like lead. (The whispers in his mind were quieter than usual.)

Jack shoved his uneasiness aside and closed Skype before locking Signe’s laptop again, grabbing a sticky note and scribbling a quick apology for using her computer. He was stumped when he got to the reason why, unsure if he should tell her about the supernatural world that most people didn’t realize existed. He finally decided to write that he’d had technical problems and stuck the note on her laptop in case something happened and he couldn’t tell her in person. Sticky notes were usually reserved for if one of them had to run out for something and the other person got home first, but today it might be due to a time traveling monster. That was a first. The Youtuber sighed and went to check on the Angel, creeping down the hall as the clawed stone hand came into sight.

Jack was still trying to figure out what to do when he saw a flash of blue light from the foot of the stairs and headed to the ground floor. “Harkness?” The man in question was looking around the sitting room with interest, a bulky pack on the floor beside him and the vortex manipulator on his wrist beeping quietly as it cycled out of its teleportation function. He looked over and grinned as Jack came downstairs, his face lighting up. The Youtuber fought down a blush as Harkness pulled him into a hug. He smelled amazing and he was warm and strong and Jack needed to stop this train of thought right now. The younger man tentatively patted Harkness on the back before pulling away, trying not to let his relief show on his face when Harkness let him go without a struggle. “Thank you for coming here. I just…” _I wanted to see you I was scared I don’t know what’s happening to me_ I dunno what to do.”

Harkness nodded. “You did the right thing, calling me. Weeping Angels are vicious.” He shouldered his pack. “Show me where it is.” Jack wordlessly led him up the stairs and pointed to his recording room. Harkness frowned when he saw the stone hand grasping at thin air through the splintered remains of the door. Caution traced the time traveler’s movements as he ducked under the outstretched limb and appraised the situation while Jack stood at the top of the stairs, his arms wrapped around himself in an unconscious attempt at self-comfort. “How long has it been stuck like this?” Harkness pulled out a piece of alien technology and started scanning the Angel as Jack rubbed at his arms.

“Maybe half an hour? God, it feels like so much longer…” He dimly registered that he was shivering, which was weird, because he felt far too hot. The whispers were getting louder. “I didn’t expect this to happen. I’m just a normal guy, I haven’t done anything to attract attention from your world since Mark went back to America.” His voice was shaking and sounded far away, like it was being filtered through dense fog. That wasn’t normal.

Harkness frowned and looked up. “Are you doing okay?” Jack managed a shaky nod, even paler than usual and wavering where he stood. Harkness dropped his scanner and hurried over. “Hey, hey. Look at me. Jack, look at me.” The young man’s eyes darted around, looking everywhere except at the man in front of him as he struggled with a sudden feeling of intense claustrophobia, searching for a way out that he just _couldn’t see_ —

Harkness grabbed slender shoulders and shook the Irish Youtuber. “Jack!” Blue eyes vivid against an ashen complexion snapped onto his, pupils dilated with fear and Jack’s chest heaving as he gasped for breath. Harkness pushed him down in an attempt to keep him from injuring himself if he fainted. “Come on, Jack. I need you to sit down. Keep the wall at your back. There you go, head between your knees, focus on breathing.” He rubbed the younger man’s back, trying to soothe him before the shock catching up with him became a full-blown panic attack. “Just listen to my voice. You’re okay. You’re still here. I will not let you be hurt. You’re safe with me.” Jack let out a choked noise that was half whimper and half laugh, which set off a cascade of body-wracking sobs. Harkness sat down beside him and kept rubbing his back, giving Jack the comfort of touch without making him feel trapped. “Breathe. Just breathe.” Jack didn’t respond, his eyes wide and unseeing as waves of panic and distress crashed over him. He clutched his knees to his chest and shook, and Harkness stayed with him.

They sat there for at least twenty minutes as Jack slowly calmed down. Harkness sat beside him, a solid comforting presence between him and the Angel. The Youtuber finally scrubbed at his face with his sleeve, pushing his green bangs out of his eyes, and the time traveler offered him a handkerchief. “You okay now?”

Jack nodded and took the square of fabric, holding it loosely as he came back to himself. “I’m sorry. I’ve never felt anything like that before. I dunno what happened.” He pressed the handkerchief to his eyes to stave off any more tears. The whispers in the back of his head slowly crept back as he regained the ability to cope with them.

“You had a panic attack. Your first, from the sound of things.” Harkness frowned as the Youtuber let out a shaky breath. “I guess being attacked by a monster will do that if you’re not used to it. But you’re okay now?” Jack nodded and shoved the handkerchief into his pocket without really thinking about it and then climbed to his feet, grimacing at the stiffness in his muscles. “Now, let’s figure out what to do. Can you help me with that?”

Jack took a deep breath, steeled himself, and held out his hand to help Harkness up. “Let’s do it.” Harkness grinned and took his hand, pulling himself up and leading the way down the hall to the Angel. Jack was still frightened, but now that he’d gotten the majority of the fear and panic out of his system he felt far more functional. He and Harkness started demolishing what was left of the door, careful to keep the Angel’s line of sight completely clear. Once they’d cleared the doorway Jack ducked into the room and grabbed his phone, checking for any messages from Signe.

Harkness followed him in, frowning when he saw the camera. “Is this still recording?”

Jack nodded absently as he read the most recent text from his girlfriend, relaxing when he saw that she’d stopped for lunch and probably wouldn’t be home for another hour, if not more. She’d had to deal with some of the assholes in the fandom butting into her online life recently, and deserved to take every opportunity to regain her equilibrium. And if that meant that she stopped to treat herself to lunch at her favorite café, then that was fine with him. “The camera? Yeah, should be. We can take care of this in less than an hour, right?”

Harkness took the camera off its tripod. “That depends on what we decide to do. And you’ll have to delete the video file on this thing.” He looked up at Jack’s squawk of protest. “No, listen. Weeping Angels should never be photographed or illustrated because there are documented instances of images of them coming to life. This needs to be turned off and the video deleted.”

Jack groaned and knocked his head against the desk. “That’s two hours of gameplay that I’m losing!” Harkness made an unsympathetic noise and turned off the camera. They set about making sure the file was gone, then turned to the Angel itself. Jack felt a vindictive urge to kick it. “What do we do now?”

“Well, we have a couple of options. We could take the traditional route and keep it and the mirror where they are, brick around them with just enough openings to let light in and keep it frozen for as long as the mirror is unobscured.” The time traveler frowned. “Honestly, I never got why what was ever considered the best solution because it’s more of a band-aid fix than anything else. So, I suggest that we do the easy but messy thing.” Jack blinked as Harkness hefted a sledgehammer that he pulled from his pack. “How do you feel about stone dust in your carpet?”

The whispers crested in a nearly-unintelligible uproar, but Jack was able to distinguish one word: _murder_. He held up his hands, refusing to so much as touch the hammer. “Wait, wait. You want to smash it? Won’t that kill it?”

“Yep. It’s a monster that was going to attack you. Are you concerned for its wellbeing?” Harkness turned to him, his eyes hard. “If it had succeeded, you would be somewhere in the past. And if what I know about these monsters is correct, this will not be the first Angel to come after you. You’re becoming increasingly influential, far more so than you want to admit if your ‘Reading Comments’ videos are any indication, and the amount of energy produced by displacing you would be enough to feed these things for centuries.” He gestured at the Angel as Jack blinked, somewhat taken aback by the realization that Harkness actually watched his videos. “This is an opportunity for you to set an example of precedent. You’re a part of this world now, no matter what. You’ve been thrown into it, and you can decide how everything will go right now: take the coward’s route, run and be chased until you can’t run any more, or you can be decisive and show that you’re dangerous to interfere with by dealing with the first thing to come after you.”

Jack stared up at him, his eyes wide. “I don’t want to kill anyone.” His eyes flicked between the man before him and the monster frozen in the doorway, sentient and sapient despite not being human. “Isn’t there anything else we can do about it? There has to be a middle ground.” Harkness’s eyes narrowed, but he leaned against the wall and let Jack think. The young man abruptly looked up, a fire in his eyes that took Harkness by surprise. “You teleported here.”

He nodded cautiously after a moment. “I did.”

“Can we teleport the Angel out of here? Or even off the planet?” Jack stared up at him, his shoulders squared and his eyes burning. “No one has to die, and I can demonstrate that I am willing to take action to protect myself and my girlfriend.”

Harkness looked down at him impassively. “The vortex manipulator is capable of teleportation, but someone would have to go with the Angel because you need to manually enter the coordinates. If it malfunctions, that means whoever teleports out will be vulnerable. Specifically, I would be vulnerable, because I’m the only one of the two of us who knows how to use it.” He frowned. “I’m sorry, kid. It’s a superficially decent plan, but it puts me in direct danger.”

Jack frowned, working for a solution that wouldn’t result in anyone being hurt or left behind. Bits and pieces of information drifted across his mind, whispered to him. “What if I go with you? I could keep my eyes on the Angel as you teleported both of us to safety.”

Harkness blinked, then threw his head back and laughed. “Wow, Jack. You really don’t have any sense of self preservation, do you? You’re talking about going off-planet using a piece of technology that’s temperamental at the best of times. What if it breaks and we get stuck somewhere? What if we get stuck with the Angel?”

For a moment the younger man’s shoulders slumped, then he set his jaw. “I’m willing to take that risk.”

The two men stared at each other, their eyes locked in a silent battle of wills. Time seemed to stretch thin, taut as an over-tuned wire.

Jack almost fidgeted under the force of Harkness’s undivided attention, then forced himself to stillness. He would not back down. He was a man of morals, and he refused to let his official debut into the supernatural world be murder of any kind. But as Harkness scowled at him with his entire demeanor shifted to uncompromising dominance and self-assured righteousness, Jack felt himself beginning to waver. Finally, just as the younger man felt he was about to crack and break down under the weight of the time traveler’s gaze, Harkness glanced away. “Fine.” He strode towards the Angel, already keying coordinates into his vortex manipulator. “We’ll try this your way.”

The younger man stared after him, his eyes wide. “Wha-? Really?”

“Yeah.” Harkness picked up his pack as Jack scrambled over. “Go grab your coat and anything you might need to survive a few days in the wilderness; I don’t have enough supplies with me to support us both if I have to fix the vortex manipulator. You have ten minutes to pack a bag while I determine the best location for this. Make sure whatever you bring doesn’t weigh over twenty pounds, because I’m not going to help you carry it.” He turned back to the technology at his wrist as Jack squeezed past the Angel to grab everything he could think of. A couple of sets of spare clothes, extra socks and boxers, his own laptop (which he kicked himself for not remembering while he was downstairs), chargers for all electronics, snacks, his water bottle, gloves, an electric razor, deodorant, his wallet, and, for luck, one of his first Septic Sam plushies; his basic convention kit. Everything was stuffed into a backpack alongside a few sharpies and some tiny gifts from fans left over from his last convention. The backpack had some room left over, so Jack added a few more protein bars and a multi-tool just in case. He scribbled another note for Signe to let her know that he might be home late and that if he wasn’t back in a day or two, then she should contact Dan and Phil and ask them to get in touch with the Doctor. Jack took a moment to look at the note and reflected on what his life had become. He sighed, stuck it on the fridge, and grabbed his bag.

He paused and tried to get a handle on the whispers before he left the kitchen. After a few seconds of silent struggle he narrowed his eyes at nothing in particular and hissed, “could you just _be quiet_? I need t’be able to hear myself think, for fucks sake, and you aren’t helping!” Much to his shock, the voices fell silent. If he’d known that just asking would make the whispers shut up, he’d have done it days ago.

The young man detoured to the coat rack by the front door to throw on his coat and favorite beanie before trotting up the stairs to his recording room. Harkness glanced up as Jack chucked his backpack in and wriggled past the Angel still frozen in the doorway. “Right on time. You have everything?” He was looking at the Youtuber oddly, but he didn’t ask anything else, so Jack nodded and hurried over as he shrugged his backpack into place. A sharp breath of surprise hissed through his teeth as Harkness pulled him close with an arm around his waist. “Put a hand on the Angel’s shoulder so that it comes with us when we teleport out.” The younger man reached out, willing himself not to shake as his fingers made contact with cold stone between the wings of the statue. Without the whispers in the back of his consciousness it seemed almost too quiet, but he didn’t have time to think about that.

Harkness keyed in the last command for the teleportation sequence.

Jack felt a lurch in his stomach like he’d just gone down a dive on a roller coaster. The stone beneath his palm seemed to ripple like sand disturbed by a shockwave.

Electric blue light engulfed the unlikely trio, and Jack staggered to the side as his feet hit ashy white ground obscured by dark blue grass. “Eyes on the Angel!” Jack wrenched his gaze to the creature in front of him, half-turned to face the two of them in the brief interval in which neither of the men was looking at it. Jack stared at the monster as the waist-high grass whipped in the wind and stung his skin through his clothes. The tough stalks rasped over the fabric of the men’s clothing and lashed against the stone creature before them. A half-extended stone wing pressed against Jack’s hand and forearm, like the Angel had been about to try to fling them away with the feathered limb. Deep indigo light from a sky streaked with inky black clouds seethed around them, making Jack’s eyes ache as the sullen glow wormed its way into his skull and crawled up his optic nerve. “You got it? Blink now if you have to.”

Jack squeezed his eyes shut as he let his hand fall away from the Angel. It felt like there was a film over his corneas from the alien atmosphere, sticking to the inside of his eyelids. “…Harkness? We’re safe, right? We’re not gonna end up on a violently inhospitable planet, are we?” The indigo light ebbed away from his optic nerve, seeping out of his eyes.

A warm hand squeezed Jack’s hip reassuringly and guided him a few steps back from the Angel, bringing a flush to his cheeks. “No. We’ll be fine.” Harkness waited for Jack to open his eyes again, his own gaze never wavering. “You ready?” He saw Jack nod in his peripheral vision and looked away from the petrified monster to key in the coordinates to Earth. As the light surrounded them again, Harkness could have sworn that the Angel turned and reached out to them—

They landed on a smooth, shining concourse surrounded by aliens all speaking in a myriad of different languages. Harkness caught his balance and dragged his disoriented companion out of the flow of traffic, trying to figure out what had happened; this was definitely not Earth. Jack stared around in growing bewilderment. “Where are we?”

Harkness squinted at one of the nearby signs and swore under his breath as he checked the coordinates blinking on the screen of the vortex manipulator against the species he knew of that used the various languages on display and being spoken around them. The technology on his wrist gave a quiet beep, flashed their coordinates one more time, then sparked and shut itself off with a small puff of smoke. “Dammit.” He sighed in exasperation, dragging his attention away from the broken piece of tech. Then he spotted a sign that gave him some hope.

**Welcome to the Crossings Intercontinual Worldgating Facility**

“Well, the good news is that we’re back in the Milky Way Galaxy. But we’re…not exactly close to Earth.” He turned to face Jack, whose eyes were going wider by the second as he saw life in some of its many forms going by. “We’re in a kind of intergalactic airport called the Crossings. It’s on Rirhath B, a small planet in the Sagittarius arm of the Milky Way.”

The Youtuber craned his neck to watch a group of nonhominid aliens skitter past. “How do you know?”

Harkness sighed and pulled Jack away as the reptilian family noticed the human gawking at them and started to get irritated at his lack of manners. “I read the welcome sign. Come on. Let’s go get something to eat while I figure out how to get you home.”

They made a quick stop at a credit union where Harkness had an established account and picked up an iridescent bracelet of translucent metal with an embedded debit chip for Jack. “Why don’t you have one too?” Jack asked as he slipped the cuff into place on his wrist.

“I already have a chip implanted in my hand.” Harkness let the clerk scan his right hand, updating the software and the registered balance.

Jack wrinkled his nose. “Eww…”

The time traveler snickered. “This from the guy who used to gage his ears.”

The two of them left the credit union and went in search of food. It took longer than it should’ve, but the time traveler let Jack stop and gawk at the alien architecture a few times. It was his first time off-planet, and that kind of experience should be respected. They found a bar and grill that they both liked the sound of and Harkness checked if Jack had any food allergies before ordering for both of them, pointing out the sigil on the menu that indicated something human-friendly so that Jack would have at least one point of reference. The waiter undulated away as Harkness tried to figure out what went wrong with his vortex manipulator and Jack did his best not to stare at the different life forms. “I feel like I’m in an episode of Star Trek. Or Star Wars.” He turned an affronted look on Harkness as he heard snickering from across the table. “What?”

“Nothing, nothing. It’s just so cute, watching you try to find a cultural touchstone for everything you’re seeing when you come from a culture that’s extremely xenophobic.” Harkness turned the piece of alien tech over in his hands, various components spread over the table.

Jack glared at him, taking a sip of his vibrant blue drink as they waited on their food. “I’m not cute. I’m fuckin’ adorable.”

Harkness outright laughed at that. The pout gracing the younger man’s lips was truly a sight to behold. “I suppose so.” He tossed the disassembled vortex manipulator down on the table as Jack muttered under his breath. “Well, we’ve got a couple of possibilities. The first, which is likely because this thing is so prone to malfunctioning that it really shouldn’t be used, is that the tech just got fried from being used so often in such a short amount of time.” Jack motioned for him to continue, absently playing with the touchscreen that made up the surface of the table. “The alternative is that the Angel reached out and tried to grab us as we were teleporting away, and its temporal abilities messed with the electronics. It’s difficult to tell, given that half of the components are melted now. Either way, we’re not where we wanted to be, although we’re in the right timeline. The vortex manipulator probably shunted us to the closest hospitable planet that would have the capacity to get us home. So, at least that failsafe worked.” The waiter brought their food and Harkness thanked him in the common tongue of the Crossings. That earned him a strange look from Jack. It took the time traveler a moment to remember that Jack probably hadn’t been exposed to the Speech before, which he would understand as clearly as his first language even though the syllables weren’t even close to matching, and he was surprised when the younger man’s expression shuttered and he turned his attention to the plates.

Silence reigned for a bit as both men fell on the food, ravenous from the adrenaline rush of successfully removing a Weeping Angel without being temporally relocated themselves. Jack frowned, mulling over Harkness’s observations about their current situation as he had his first taste of alien food. He wasn’t focusing on the familiarity of the strange language that Harkness had spoken in. He wasn’t going to dwell on how he might be able to understand it. Jack had thought the whispers sounded strange. To know that Harkness spoke whatever alien language the whispers communicated in…it was both unnerving and comforting. It meant he wasn’t going crazy. But he had the distinct feeling that the interplanetary travel had knocked something loose, something that had been keeping full comprehension of that strange language at bay. He pushed those thoughts to the side with difficulty and focused on what Harkness had said. “The vortex manipulator shouldn’t be used?” The time traveler shook his head, chewing a mouthful of his sandwich. “Then why did you use it to come to me?” He tensed as the older man blinked slowly, then swallowed his food. “You could’ve told me to fuck off, or to just smash the Angel. You actually risked your safety to get to me as quickly as you knew how.” Jack put down his spoon, his bowl of stew forgotten. “Why?”

Harkness frowned and put down his sandwich, brushing some crumbs off his hands. “I wanted to help.” The look Jack leveled at him clearly said that he wasn’t buying it. “Jack, I don’t want to see you hurt. And a Weeping Angel turning up is something that needs to be taken care of immediately.”

“Bullshit. You were all for taking the sledgehammer to it while it was stone. I told you I had it trapped. You could’ve told me to go to the nearest store and get a sledgehammer to take care of the problem myself.” Jack put his elbows on the table and laced his fingers together, manners be damned, and stared Harkness down. “Why’d you risk yourself to come to me when you didn’t want to risk being stuck with the Angel? You knew that you’d gotten incredibly lucky with how long your tech had stayed functional.”

Harkness’s expression closed off. “Leave it, Jack. I’m getting you home, and that’s what matters.”

“No! Answer my question!” The people around them went quiet and Harkness sighed.

“Eat your food. I’ll tell you once we’re some place a bit more private.”

Jack glared at him, but picked up his spoon again. His stew was a dark blue meat in purple gravy with chunks of red vegetable. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t like anything he’d tasted before. The flavor of the meat was a strange hybrid of bison and lamb, and the vegetable was some kind of root that tasted nutty in a way unlike anything he’d experienced on earth. The bright blue drink tasted like chocolate milk with heavy dashes of vanilla-infused cream despite its crystal clarity. It also tasted more than a little alcoholic, which was why he was balancing each sip with water. Harkness had looked somewhat disappointed when he’d noticed that, the smarmy bastard. “…What is this?”

“Well, the stew is mostly meat and root vegetable. I would tell you what the ingredients are called, but I can’t pronounce them.” He smirked at Jack. “That blue drink is Romulan ale. I was kind of hoping you’d chug it because it’s known for knocking plenty of different species on their asses. You can’t win everything, I guess.” The younger man snorted and kicked his companion under the table.

Jack hid his smirk behind his glass of ale, savoring the surprised curse from across the booth. “I’m Irish, Harkness. It takes a lot of alcohol to knock me on my ass.” He smiled sweetly to cover the snark in his response and ignored the little voice in the back of his head that told him he was edging far too close to genuine flirting.

The waiter came by with the cheque as they finished their meals. He held out a digital check holder and Harkness waved his hand over the embedded chip reader before Jack could so much as hold out his braceleted wrist. “Don’t worry about it, Jack. I’ve got this.” The Youtuber subsided when he realized it was all Harkness’s money anyway and finished his food as the time traveler swept the vortex manipulator and its ruined parts into his bag. They left the restaurant and Harkness smiled, nudging his companion. “Look up.” Jack shot him a dubious look, but humored him and glanced skyward. His mouth dropped open.

The ceiling had phased to transparency and revealed a night sky filled with pulsing stars far closer to the planet and to each other than Jack had ever seen before. It was a beautiful kaleidoscope of color and light fracturing the darkness and calling out to him. He could feel his heart responding, reaching out to meet the stars, yearning to touch the awesome sight before him. Whispering started at the edges of his consciousness, rising and falling with the pulsing of the stars. It was like the stars were calling him to join them, beseeching him to listen to their song and to _understand_ what it was like to burn in the cold vacuum of space and to feel the radiation of sibling stars. He felt himself lifting, going up on his toes, nearly weightless—

Harkness smiled softly as he watched Jack take his first look at the night sky of an alien planet. The younger man stared out at the galaxy, the light of the stars seeming to glow in his eyes. “It’s… How is that possible? So many stars so close together, shouldn’t they all be colliding?” He took another step forward, still balanced on the balls of his feet, almost as though he could step up into the sky. “It’s beautiful.”

Harkness watched Jack quietly. He could see a sliver of space between the younger man’s foot and the ground; he held his silence on the phenomenon and instead answered Jack’s question. “This planet is located in a cluster of short-term variable stars. I can’t give you the exact science of it, but these stars all pulsate in some way. Some of them have cycles of up to seventy days, others barely half a day. Some of them aren’t even spherical in shape.” He gently looped an arm around Jack’s waist, pulling him close and pointing out one star in particular. And if by pulling Jack close he also brought him safely back to the ground, no one needed to know. “See that one? It’s a non-radial pulsating star, which is why it looks oblong at the moment.” They stayed like that for some time, the concourse dimming around them as Rirhath B slipped into night, Harkness pointing out different stars and alien constellations. Eventually they found themselves sitting on a couch in a deserted seating area, secluded from the other travelers. “…and that constellation there, that’s the huntress chasing the three brothers, trying to catch one of them as a husband. The legend of a would-be lover chasing a group of siblings through the sky is a nearly universal one, like Orion and the Pleiades on Earth.” He paused as Jack leaned against him, smiling when he realized that the young man was ready to fall asleep. “C’mon. Let’s go get a hotel room for the night.”

Jack grumbled as Harkness pulled him to his feet and led him through the hallways to the hospitality wing of the Crossings. Harkness spoke with the receptionist about their budget and desired comfort level, then guided Jack into the hotel that the receptionist recommended. They checked in and made their way to the room. The décor was mostly soft blues and asymmetrical lines, leaving no doubt that the room was alien. Jack was too tired to appreciate the ambiance of his surroundings; he kicked off his trainers and struggled out of his jeans before collapsing onto the bed, content to sleep in his boxers and T-shirt. Harkness chuckled as he stripped down to his undershirt and boxer-briefs. “Not even going to get under the covers, huh?” Jack flipped him the bird without lifting his head from the pillows before he burrowed under the blankets. Harkness smiled and walked over, resting a hand on the Jack-shaped lump under the duvet. “Sleep well.”

He was about to turn off the light and climb into his own bed when he heard rustling from Jack’s side of the room and looked up to see the Youtuber staring at him, sleepy but still aware of his surroundings. “You never answered my question. About why you came to help me.”

Harkness sighed and sat down on his bed. “Jack, you don’t need to know.”

“But I want to.”

Silence fell as the older man thought about his response. “…I care about you, Jack. Enough to want to be proactive in not letting you get hurt.” Harkness got into bed and switched off the light as a pang of empathy shot through Jack’s chest, like he and Harkness were both pining for the same thing. “Good night, Jack. You’re going to need to get some sleep. You’ve had a long day, and tomorrow will probably be just as exhausting.”

Jack stared into the darkness as Harkness got himself situated, unable to shake the feeling that this entire situation just wasn’t _fair_. He knew life itself wasn’t fair, but was it so wrong to want this one thing to be simple? To want to resolve his feelings for this man and move on?

The two men lay there in the darkness for quite some time, neither of them willing to make the first move for fear of losing the tentative friendship they already had, though it was rife with sexual tension. Eventually they fell into a restless sleep, the delicate balance between them teetering on increasingly unsteady ground.

~*~*~*~

Jack woke up first. For a few paralyzing seconds he couldn’t remember where he was—

—then Harkness murmured in his sleep across the room, and Jack’s memories came crashing back. He was on an alien planet of his own volition with someone he knew, not stranded outside his timeline by a Weeping Angel.

He was safe.

Jack climbed out of bed to go relieve himself and take a shower before Harkness woke up and made thinking difficult. Something about that man always turned his thoughts to the gutter, and his propensity to physical contact only clouded Jack’s mind even more.

He took care of the most pressing need, then turned to the shower: a glass-tiled cubicle with transparent doors and a waterproof control panel set into the wall beneath a showerhead. After much swearing and guessing at what the controls on the digitized panel meant, Jack managed to get the shower to dispense water at a reasonable temperature.

(He ignored the flashes of recognition, the way the symbols on the panel made sense one second and were incomprehensible the next. He was fine. Nothing was happening.)

He waited until the green gel that had originally bubbled from the showerhead completely washed down the drain before stepping into the stall and grabbing one of the shampoo bottles clearly marked with the human-friendly sigil; it smelled like cardamom and lavender. Jack tried to gather his thoughts so that he could make sure he wasn’t actually going crazy.

The whispers were becoming easier to understand and easier to control, although his control over them was far from absolute. He could understand whatever weird language that Harkness had briefly used last night at the restaurant, and he could sometimes read the alien writing. He was also stuck on an alien planet with a man who had, admittedly, saved his life. Unfortunately, that man was also unreasonably attractive and the cause of much confusion, especially since Jack had never experienced strong physical attraction to men before. Sure, he recognized when a man was gorgeous; he had eyes. But he’d rarely ever had the urge to do more than flirt harmlessly, not even when the bantering escalated quite publically the way it had with Mark. On top of the sexuality crisis and the off-world travel and the sudden appearance of a fucking monster from a BBC sci-fi show in his recording room, Jack also needed his dangerously beautiful companion to get him home to his girlfriend. Because he was in what amounted to an intergalactic airport. Because he’d had the bright idea of using technology that he _hadn’t known or been told_ was so faulty that it was dangerous to use. Harkness had used it to get to him, for fuck’s sake! How was he supposed to know that this would happen?

…God, Signe was probably worried by now. Hopefully his note instructing her to get in touch with Dan and Phil so they could contact the Doctor would ease her mind.

Jack couldn’t help his dubious snort when that thought drifted through his brain, scrubbing at his hair a little harder. Yeah, and maybe his feelings for Harkness would magically disappear with his return to Earth and his girlfriend.

A treacherous little voice in the back of his mind that had nothing to do with the whispers reminded him that polyamory worked quite well for many people, even those who had previously been nothing but monogamous. He hit his forehead against the tiles until the voice went away.

Jack sighed as he finished shampooing his hair and grabbed the human-friendly soap, which tingled pleasantly against his skin. The Youtuber tried to force away his worries about what was going on at home in his absence so that he could focus on the problems at hand. Specifically, his traveling companion and how he was going to get home. Jack gritted his teeth and scrubbed at his skin until it turned pink. What about that man was so attractive, anyway? Just because he was devastatingly handsome, intelligent, competent, and carried himself with so much confidence that he inspired people to trust and follow him didn’t mean he was necessarily attractive. Not at all.

…Who the hell was he kidding? “Dammit, you’re meeting all of my standards,” Jack muttered under his breath as he worked more soap into the loofah. A knock sounded in the small room and the Youtuber jumped about a foot in the air. “Fuckin’ hell! What the shit do you want?!”

There was a moment of amused silence before Harkness spoke from the other side of the bathroom door. “I’m heading down to the complimentary breakfast. You want anything?”

Jack flushed, trying to play it cool. “I’m not picky. As long as it’s sweet, I don’t care.”

“Got it. I’ll be back soon.”

Jack heard the door open and close before he slumped against the tiled wall. He took a moment to get his brain to stop running in panicked circles and hurried to finish his shower, trying his hardest not to think about the man he was desperately attracted to and stuck with for the foreseeable future. He also did his damnedest to ignore the effect that Harkness’s sleep-roughened voice had on him. When that failed, he gritted his teeth and took care of the situation that arose as quickly as he could, fighting fantasies of dark hair and blue eyes and broad shoulders for as long as possible before everything crashed over him. When he was done he turned off the shower and rested his forehead against the cool glass tile wall, not bothering to keep his voice down. “Why the fuck d’you have to be so perfect, Harkness?”

Out in the bedroom, having returned from the lackluster complimentary breakfast empty-handed not two minutes after he’d left, Harkness pressed the back of his hand to his mouth as he tried to wrap his head around what he’d just heard. Was there a chance…?

He heard Jack mutter “I’m fucked,” from the bathroom and left the room as silently as possible so that the younger man wouldn’t know he’d been there; he might as well try to preserve the boy’s dignity. He’d go out to the concourse and grab some breakfast to bring back to the room. That would give Jack enough time to get himself put back together and Harkness enough time to find a decent meal to start the day rather than the slop the hotel set out.

Half an hour later, the former TORCHWOOD operative returned triumphant with sweet-and-savory crepes made from native Rirhath ingredients. Jack, fully dressed and sitting on his bed, glanced up from where he was working on his laptop. And if he turned an interesting shade of pink when he set eyes on the older man, well, Harkness didn’t say anything. He grinned and held out the compostable plastic cone wrapped around the crepe. “Breakfast.” Jack murmured a thank-you and took the food, being careful not to let his fingers brush against his companion’s. “What are you working on?”

Jack frowned, speaking around a mouthful of crepe. “I’m trying to—holy fuckballs, these are good—tryin’ to get access to the Wi-Fi, or whatever the equivalent is here. Assuming I can ever reach the internet on Earth, I need to see how much Tumblr is panicking over how I missed my scheduled uploads.” He moaned as flavors exploded across his tongue. “Oh my god, what I need is regular access to these. They’re almost as good as cake.”

Harkness cleared his throat, trying to ignore the pornographic sounds Jack was making as he continued to eat. “Well, your computer probably isn’t compatible with the tech they have here. We could get it upgraded if you wanted, but I don’t think it would be worth it unless you intend to come here regularly.” Jack shook his head, moaning in delight as he took another bite of his breakfast. Harkness smiled, amused despite himself. “Should I leave you and the crepe alone?”

The Irish Youtuber turned bright red. “No! No, sorry. I’ll try to be a bit more restrained.”

It was too easy. Harkness couldn’t pass up something so obvious. “Well, if you want to be restrained, all you have to do is ask. Bondage is one of my specialties.” Jack nearly spat his food across the room, and Harkness lost it.

Jack glared down at the time traveler busy laughing on the floor. “Fuck you, man. Fuck. You.” That only made Harkness laugh harder, and Jack’s eyes narrowed before he smirked and sat back, deliberately spreading his legs. “Oh, Harkness…” He trailed a hand down his chest, toying with the hem of his shirt as the older man stopped laughing and stared up at him, his pupils abruptly dilated. Jack’s smirk widened; he was enjoying his sudden rush of power. “You wouldn’t be so ungentlemanly as to force yourself on someone relying on you for help, would you?”

Harkness saw exactly what Jack was doing, and had no intention of taking it lying down. He got over his momentary astonishment and smirked right back at him. The next thing Jack knew, he had a warm, confident, dangerous man between his legs, hands braced on his inner thighs and thumbs resting perilously close to his groin. Harkness made small circles at his inseam just to see how red Jack could go. “Oh, Jack,” he mocked, throwing the young man’s words back at him, “I would love nothing better than to expand your horizons.” He rubbed his thumb over the front of Jack’s jeans, and reveled in the sharp intake of breath. “You have no idea what I could teach you, of what I want to do to you…” The two of them stared at each other, the tension between them crackling as they each waited for the other to make the first move. The balance between them shifted, the ground crumbled a bit—

Harkness held Jack’s gaze until the younger man was squirming, then until he flushed and looked away. The time traveler chuckled and stood up. “Don’t try to out-seduce me, Jack. You will lose.” He moved to his side of the room as Jack gaped up at him like a fish out of water. “Come on. I need to see if my vortex manipulator can be fixed. We probably won’t check out until tomorrow at the earliest, so you can leave your stuff here if you want.” He left Jack sitting on the bed, turning his back on him as he started gathering his things to give the young man the illusion of privacy. Harkness cursed at himself silently; innuendo aside, he should have more restraint than that. He was old enough and experienced enough that he should be able to leave well enough alone and simply enjoy being in the young man’s presence without trying to trip him into bed. 

What the hell was it about Jack that made it so difficult to resist taking his normal, casual flirting to something far more serious? The Youtuber was straight, in a monogamous relationship, and had no interest in him outside the shower, apparently. If he had any issues with repressed sexuality, that was his problem, and Harkness had no obligation to help him get over himself. …Except that he really, really wanted to.

The two of them headed out to the concourse, Jack with his backpack just in case, both of them ignoring the tension that drifted around them like fog as Jack followed in Harkness’s wake in search of a repair facility. They eventually found a specialty tech repair shop and showed the vortex manipulator to the person they ended up talking to, a hominid with bright green faceted eyes, platinum blonde hair, and silver tattoos swirling across her jet black skin. She took one look at it and shoved it back at Harkness. “Nothing doing. This is broken beyond repair.” Jack’s eyes went wide as he heard English under the sibilant hissing of her words, the syllables that he understood not matching with her lips at all. (Were the whispers speaking in a common language? How did he understand?)

Harkness noticed his confusion and leaned over to murmur in his ear. “She’s using a language called the Speech. Everything in the universe understands it. Don’t ask me how, because I don’t know. It takes forever to learn, so I’ll get you a universal translator when we’re done here.” He turned his attention back to the tech specialist in front of him. “It’s not beyond repair. I’ve fixed the damn thing when it was in worse states than this, but I don’t have the tools to repair it myself this time.”

She reluctantly picked up the vortex manipulator again, her claws scraping the metal as she looked at it a bit more closely. “…Then it’s out of your budget. This is very close to Gallifreyan technology, which is difficult to work with.”

“Nothing is out of my budget.” Harkness winced as she leveled a flat stare at him and rattled off a number that sounded intimidating even without knowledge of the local units of currency. “Okay, that might be a bit high. Is there anything we can do to lower the price? Or would you let me rent your tools and fix it myself?” Her look spoke volumes of her opinion on that. Harkness sighed and picked up the vortex manipulator, putting it in his bag. “We’ll be back.” Harkness dragged Jack away from a display case full of prepaid communicators that made his mobile look like a brick in comparison, ignoring the indignant _hey!_ “Come on, let’s go get you a new toy.”

Jack turned bright red and sputtered. “What?!”

Harkness looked at him strangely. “Universal communicator? I thought you liked new technology.”

The Youtuber turned scarlet, and suddenly Harkness knew exactly what he’d thought of when he mentioned toys. He started snickering, and Jack shot him a venomous look. “Shut up.”

“Oh, come on. We can get you one of those toys too, if you want. They have great boutiques here, and I’m sure we can find something nice for you.” His eyes gleamed with mischief as Jack choked on his words, trying to come up with anything to say in response. “Cat got your tongue, Jack? Or do you want a gag?”

“…Never tried that.” Jack stared at his feet as he followed Harkness through the crowds.

“Never tried what? Being gagged during sex?”

“No! Well, yes. I mean, I’ve never tried that, but—not what I was talking about!” He ducked his head and hid behind his fringe, the green hair obscuring his face as his companion glanced at him curiously. “Toys. I’ve never tried toys.” Harkness stopped dead, forcing Jack to skid to a stop or risk walking into him. “You okay, dude?”

The older man turned to face him with disbelief written over his face. “Never? Not once?” Jack squirmed under his gaze and shook his head. “Why not? It feels amazing.”

“I dunno! It’s just not my thing!” Jack huffed and turned to walk away, only to squawk as Harkness snagged the back of his shirt and dragged him in the opposite direction. “Hey!! Lemme go, ya bastard!”

Harkness tried not to smile at the way Jack’s Irish accent came through much stronger the more annoyed he got. “Universal translators are this way, babe.”

Jack flushed. “Don’t call me that.”

“Sure thing, sweetie.” Harkness laughed at the exasperated yell he got in response to that pet name, letting go of Jack’s shirt as he pulled ahead.

“Why do I know you? No, scratch that, why did I think it was a good idea to contact you?” Jack continued grumbling without much heat as they reached the shop that sold the translators. As he stood back and let Harkness deal with the haggling a commotion across the concourse caught his attention. Scraps of what sounded like English under an amalgamate of alien languages caught his ear and stirred up the whispers in the back of his mind. His curiosity got the better of him and he trotted over to see what was going on as he pushed his inexplicable comprehension to the side. It was just the Speech. Just a language that apparently everything understood.

He was fine. He wasn’t changing. He was just getting better at hearing that language.

A group of aliens, hominid and insectoid and furred and winged, crowded around two people who appeared to be playing a platform game in an arcade complex; the air thrummed with the same spectator energy that he remembered from gaming tournaments at some of the conventions he’d attended. As he approached, one of them lost and threw down the controller. Jack blinked in interest and glanced around as the other gamer passed around a palm-sized iridescent chip covered in circuitry that eventually made its way back to them before being passed to an onlooker who held onto it for safekeeping. There was some grumbling from the group that had cheered the losing player and the crowd started to disperse. Jack made his way over, hoping at least one person in the vicinity was wearing a universal translator. “Um, excuse me?” Everyone turned to look at him, and he flushed at suddenly being the center of attention. “Can I play? I’ve never used a controller like that, but if you let me get t’know the system, I think I might be okay at it. It just looks really fun, and I’d like ta try my hand at it.” There was some murmuring, then the winner of the previous round fluttered their moth-like wings at him and tapped their forelimbs together. They were wearing a universal translator, but didn’t seem to possess the necessary anatomy to produce sounds. One of the onlookers translated the sign language for Jack.

“You can play, but you need to pay the entry fee.” Jack blinked, then glanced at the bracelet with the debit chip on his wrist. How much could it be? He held out his arm and the alien in charge of the chip that had been passed around touched the circuitry to the bracelet. Someone passed Jack a controller that was, thankfully, compatible with opposable thumbs. Everyone watched as the Youtuber sat on a stool in front of the holographic screen, getting used to the game in the tutorial level. It seemed to be a cross between Geometry Dash and Super Mario Maker in terms of gameplay and variability, but with the added difficulty of taking place in a three-dimensional space rather than on a two-dimensional platformer.

After about ten minutes Jack looked up at his opponent, who had been doing their own warmups on their screen. “You’re on.” And just like that, the game began.

At first Jack did about as badly as he’d expected, barely holding his own and skidding by with scores that only just allowed him into the next level, but as the game went on he became more and more familiar with what he could expect. In less than thirty minutes he was navigating the landscape with ease, his usual facetious commentary kicking in as he settled into the game and started having fun. Then he got a higher score than his opponent. Jack grinned widely in the shocked silence as the scores went up on the board. “Oh, yes! Now I’ve got it! Now we’re gettin’ into twisty nipple goodness!” He threw himself into the game once the next level loaded, oblivious to the growing size of the crowd as people were drawn in by his voice and the increasing difficulty of the levels. He played for what felt like hours until the victory banner popped up in front of him, sparkles and rune-like letters scrolling across his screen. “What?” He looked over at his opponent, who was watching him in amusement as their screen showed a replay of their character being knocked off the edge of the platform by spiked projectile. After a long game of pitting two skilled gamers in their own rights against each other, it was a victory of chance. “Holy shit! Did I win?” The alien holding the circuitry-covered chip tapped him on the shoulder, then touched the chip to his bracelet. The laser-engraved channels in the bracelet briefly lit up, then died back down to decorative patterns.

Jack stared at the boisterous crowd packed into the arcade in bewilderment, then jumped as his opponent settled a limb of some sort on his head (it looked like it might end in a three-fingered hand, but there were at least two joints between the shoulder and the wrist) and waved their antennae at him in congratulations before motioning at the screen, where there was an empty space waiting for the name of the round’s winner. Jack blinked in surprise as he took the proffered tablet. After a moment of internal debate, he used the stylus to draw Sam in full color before captioning the illustration “Jacksepticeye.” His opponent tilted their head to the side before tipping a wing at him in acknowledgement. Jack grinned at them, climbing to his feet. “Thanks. That was a great game, and I haven’t had that much fun in a while. You gave me one hell of a run for my money.” The gamer waited as the universal translator finished relaying what Jack said, then bobbed their head in a smile and fluttered away. Jack turned around and saw Harkness looking at him, appearing to be both amused and impressed. The Youtuber had the decency to look sheepish as he set down the controller and walked over. “Sorry. I got kind of distracted. It ain’t too different from a convention, with all the people and things going on.”

Harkness handed him a brand new universal translator with a smile. “So I see. You won, though. Which is good, considering how much it cost for you to play.”

Jack grinned, still riding the wave of his unexpected victory as he fitted the earpiece in place and settled the lenses that would translate writing over his eyes. “Yeah. Oh, man, I wish we had games like that on Earth. Think of the possibilities all the technology opens up! Wait, did I almost bankrupt us?” Harkness waved aside the Youtuber’s concerns and adjusted the translator for him. The lenses glowed as they registered the life signs of the wearer, then faded to near-invisibility as the silicate compound absorbed the ambient light and refracted it in such a way that the translated writing was only visible to Jack.

The time traveler smiled and let his companion babble happily as he headed to an ATM embedded in the nearby wall. The glass lit up as he approached and laid his hand against the surface to check his account balance. Given the size of the crowd, Jack had probably won enough to buy them a nice dinner. The display read his biometrics before it chimed and showed a balance far greater than he’d had before they appeared on Rirhath B the previous day. Jack peeked around him, blinking at the symbols on the screen as the translator gave him the information in a numerical value that he could understand. He whistled low. “Damn. How much of that is from just now?”

The next moment he was pressed against the wall as Harkness kissed him deeply. The time traveler pulled away and grinned down at Jack breathlessly. “Most of it.”

Jack flushed, his hands gripping the front of Harkness’s coat. “Er.”

“You. Are. Brilliant.” Harkness punctuated each word with a kiss. “We have enough to get the vortex manipulator repaired, and to take a worldgate home!” He beamed and pulled his companion into an impromptu whirling dance across the concourse floor, the Youtuber trying to keep pace as he blushed so intensely that his ears turned red. The time traveler finally pulled them to a stop, grinning down at Jack. “Thank you so much, you gorgeous, awesome, wonderful person.” Harkness leaned down and kissed him again, and this time Jack kissed him back, dizzy and breathless and tired of fighting his own emotions, at least for the moment.

They finally pulled apart, Jack clinging to his companion as they stared at each other. Harkness smiled softly, leaning down and kissing his forehead as he straightened the lenses of the translator, which he’d knocked askew with his enthusiastic kisses. “Let’s get you a ticket home.” Jack held on to him, his arms wrapped around Harkness’s torso under his grey coat; he wasn’t ready to let go yet. The time traveler smiled and held him close, enjoying the warmth of the slighter man.

Jack all but burrowed into Harkness when he felt his embrace returned, relishing the comfort of touch as the stress of the last thirty-six hours seemed to crash into him all at once. Everything weighed down on his shoulders, from the Angel to the whispers that he kept hearing in the back of his mind and were creeping up on him again. “…I don’t know if I want to go home. I mean, I do, but I also don’t want this to end. I’ve seen so much, more than I ever thought I would. Harkness, I’ve been to _space_. I never thought I would see alien constellations or leave Earth. And I’ve seen so many different life forms in just this past day or two. Hell, I just placed in an alien video game tournament, or whatever it was.” He pressed his forehead against Harkness’s chest. “I don’t want this to end.”

Harkness frowned and stroked his hair. “You could stay, if you wanted. You’d pick up the Speech fairly quickly with the help of the translator, and enough humans come through here that I don’t think you’d be lonely.” The time traveler sighed, not yet willing to voice his suspicions about Jack’s affinity for the Speech. He’d seen the way the younger man shook his head from time to time, like he was chasing away voices. “And I would stay with you, for as long as you wanted. We could go just about anywhere if you didn’t want to stay in the Crossings.” He caught Jack’s chin and tilted his head back, meeting his eyes. “But do you want to leave everything behind? Your family, your girlfriend, your community? Can you turn your back on all of them and not look back?”

The young man floundered for a moment before he turned his mind to himself. He took a long look and thought about everything that his loved ones meant to him, what his community meant. He thought about the opportunity and potential that his life held as it was on Earth, and almost immediately, he knew his answer. “I can’t turn my back on any of them. Not forever. If there was a way for me to come back here when I felt like it, when I didn’t need to worry about leaving everything behind me, then I would jump at it in a heartbeat. But I can’t abandon everyone. Not like this.”

Harkness stared down at him and saw no signs of hesitation. He smiled wryly and watched his window of opportunity close. “I know.” He let go of Jack, his fingers drifting over the young man’s arms. “Come on. Let’s see when the earliest gate to your region comes online.” He led the way down the concourse to the ticketing booth, and as they walked Jack slipped his hand into Harkness’s. They might as well enjoy the time they had together.

They reached an information desk and spoke with the gate manager, whose feathered crest bobbed in time with her words. “I’m afraid the next gate near those coordinates doesn’t open until tomorrow in the fifteenth hour of the day. And it is,” at this point she said something that translated to _approximately three hundred seventy miles_ , “from the desired destination. The next gate within a _hundred-mile_ radius of the coordinates won’t come online for five days. If you’re willing to pay more, you could charter a soft gate to the exact coordinates you wish to reach, but that is a very expensive option.”

Jack frowned and leaned close to Harkness. “The gate she’s talking about tomorrow—that’s a gate to London, right? I can get home from there.”

The time traveler frowned. “I might have to smooth things over at the border, especially since there’s no record of you crossing from Ireland to England. You’ll have just popped up in the wrong country.” He sighed. “Even so, it’s the best option we have, because we can’t afford the soft gate directly to your home.” He turned to the gate manager with a winning smile. “We’ll take two tickets to London,” he said in the Speech. He accepted the plastic chips from the gate manager, ignoring Jack’s surprised look for the time being. Harkness intended to come with him? And that language again… Harkness’s voice jolted the Youtuber from his thoughts. “So, dinner? There’s a great locally-run place around here with ingredients sourced strictly from within this solar system.”

Harkness wove his way through the crowds, Jack trotting to keep up with him. “You can talk in the Speech?” 

His companion smiled and slipped an arm around his waist. “Sure can. It took a while, but I’m moderately fluent.” The contact pushed thoughts about the unusual language that had been plaguing his existence for the past few days out of Jack’s mind, and for once he didn’t bother questioning why it felt right; he’d been fighting his own emotions constantly over the past day, and he was too exhausted to continue that particular battle for the time being. 

“…I didn’t expect you t’ come back with me. You seem pretty at home here,” Jack voiced a nagging thought that had popped up when Harkness asked for two tickets rather than the one needed to send Jack on his merry way.

The older man looked at him in bemusement. “I can’t leave you to navigate an alien world on your own, and I can smooth over any problems that might arise from you appearing in a country you shouldn’t be in. No matter what happens, it’s best if we stick together for the time being.” Jack blushed and nodded, letting Harkness draw him close. “…Jack, I know your girlfriend means a lot to you.” The younger man stiffened, but nodded. “I also know that, if nothing else, I’m the source of quite a bit of confusion for you. I recognize a sexual identity crisis when I see one.” He chuckled as the Youtuber turned bright pink. “I just want to let you know that if you want me to, I’ll get you home and then waltz out of your life like I was never a part of it. However, you should know that I’ve been in poly relationships before, and in my experience, they tend to work out just fine for everyone as long as communication is open. And I’m willing to try my hardest to make that kind of arrangement work with you and your girlfriend if that’s what you both want.” He glanced at Jack, who was listening intently. Like these thoughts had crossed his mind as well. “I’m very much attracted to you, Jack, and I want to see if things could work between us.”

Jack frowned as he processed the information and followed Harkness into a small restaurant. It was a fusion of old ambiance and new technology, which blended surprisingly well. “…I dunno how Signe will feel about that. Hell, I don’t even know how I feel about it.” The hostess seated them, took their drink orders, and laid down old-fashioned fold-out menus before slithering back to the foyer. “We’ve never really discussed it, and you’re…not really what I expected to turn my head. A pretty girl, sure, that wouldn’t’ve surprised me. Hell, I’ve met plenty of pretty young women intent on getting all sorts of things from me since I started to become popular on YouTube, and none of them held a candle to Signe. As for men…” He sighed. “I never thought I’d be tempted by another man until Mark came along, and that was mild enough that I could just ignore it as my being a fanboy. It wasn’t a visceral _want_ the way it is with you, an’ it didn’t hurt that Signe thought my crush was cute and encouraged the flirting until some of the more vocal fans blew it way out of proportion.” Jack glanced away as a dark purple bottle materialized on the table in front of him with an electronic hum. He absently started peeling the label off just to give his hands something to do. “Eventually my crush died down to somethin’ manageable. Mark getting together with Dan probably helped with that more than anything, ’cause I didn’t want to be a homewrecker for them any more than Mark did for me and Signe.” He trailed off and sipped his drink, and Harkness motioned for him to continue as the silence grew. Jack glanced down at the menu, absently reading the text that appeared on the lenses of his translator. “…My crush on you isn’t going away. It just gets worse as time goes by. Hell, it’s gotten way more intense in these past couple of days because I’ve been with you constantly.” He laughed bitterly as the surreality of the situation dawned on him; he never imagined that he’d be having this conversation with anyone, least of all a man from the future who fought off threats to the galaxy for a living. “The only reason I called you was because of that fuckin’ Angel. If it hadn’t shown up, I wouldn’t ever have picked up the phone. You’re too much of a danger to my relationship with Signe. Hell, you’re a danger to my life as I know it. I’m pretty sure my family would be supportive, and the Internet would fall all over itself to show how much it loved and hated me if I had a…boyfriend.” Jack ripped the label completely off the bottle as he stumbled over the word, agitation colouring his movements. “But I dunno what to do about _you_ , Harkness. Part of me wants to just get you out of my system, go back to Earth, and pretend that this never happened. Part of me wants to run away with you, an’ fuck the consequences. The rest of me wants ta see if a poly relationship with you and Signe would work, but I can’t help but wonder if it would work at all, especially if you’re goin’ to be off romping around universe all the time. I mean, distance on the same planet is tough. What’s it like being in a long distance relationship with someone who might not be in the same solar system?” He raked a hand through his hair without care for the unkempt green strands falling into his face. “Fuck, Harkness. I don’t even know what I want to do. And, well, I’d understand if you don’t want anything t’do with me now that I’ve spilled my guts all over the table.”

Harkness watched Jack as the younger man picked up his drink to stop himself from monologuing any more than he already had. “Well, distance is distance. We can still get your laptop upgraded with an amplifier to make sure the signal can reach me no matter where I am and install a program that works like Skype. You’d have to make sure you never lost the alien tech or you could change the future of humanity, but I think you’d be able to keep it safe.” He reached out and set his hand over Jack’s, making him go still. “I certainly return your interest. I have since I met you, even if it started as nothing more than objective appreciation.” He looked him over with a cheeky grin. “You’re certainly cute, and intelligent and kind to boot.” The time traveler stroked his thumb over the pulse in the Youtuber’s wrist. “If you want to introduce me to Signe, that’s fine. I think it’s a good idea no matter what, seeing as how I’m the one responsible for you being off-world.” He let go, his fingers brushing over the sensitive skin on the inside of Jack’s wrist as he pulled away. “But as I said, if you don’t want anything to do with me after this, I’ll fuck off. It’s up to you.”

The younger man sat there silently, turning the possibilities over and over in his mind. By now the thoughts felt like smoothed pebbles to his mental touch: familiar, heavy, worn down by the constantly running waters of his feelings and concerns and hopes as he struggled to come up with an answer. In the end he turned to his menu and quietly picked a dish as Harkness did the same. The waiter came by, took their orders, and drifted away again with the menus hovering in the center of its vaporous body. “…Would you…would you be willing to meet Signe?” Jack looked up at his companion, his eyes wide and almost frightened as the words tumbled out of his mouth. He could feel himself trembling, and he couldn’t tell if it was because of what he was asking for, or if he was terrified that he would lose both Signe and Harkness. Harkness’s look was inscrutable, and Jack heard _caution interest WANT caution_ echo in the dark recesses of his consciousness, a mixture of emotions that he wasn’t feeling because he was too nervous to feel anything but mounting anxiety. It was the clearest the whispers had ever been. “And if things go well, if she’s okay with it, would you mind if I…got you out of my system?” The voice in the back of his mind murmured that he would be rubbing salt in the wound before it even opened, setting himself up to fall hard, but Jack ruthlessly squashed it.

And if by squashing the voice of his self-doubt he happened to block out the whispers that kept gathering at the edges of his perception, shreds of comprehension of the world around him that were far too complete to be from the universal translator, then that was just fine.

Harkness watched him, almost seeming to look through him. “If you’re not sure about what you want, then I would advise against anything intimate until you’ve eased your conscience. We can go to one of the tech booths and upgrade your phone so you can call Signe tonight, if you want.”

Jack glared as his companion’s words registered. “You’d advise against anything intimate? You kissed me!” The whispers gathering around him again fled in the face of his indignation as he drummed his fingers on the table.

The time traveler cleared his throat and fidgeted with the lapel of his coat, a nervous habit that he’d never been able to kick. (Jack had to compartmentalize that knowledge without giving it much time to process. _How did he know that? How was he suddenly able to get such a good read on his companion? Whispers in his brain that wouldn’t stop-!_ ) “Yeah, sorry about that. I got kind of caught up in the moment. But the offer still stands to get you in contact with her.”

The younger man frowned as the food materialized on their table, his momentary irritation fading with the whispers. The perception seemed to ebb and flow like the tide, and it wasn’t like it was Harkness’s fault that things seemed to be pressing against his mind. He was just tired. “…Alright. Let’s do the upgrade after dinner. It’ll make her feel better to hear from me no matter what, and that way I can tell her when I’ll be home.” Harkness smiled in relief, and Jack could feel his heart soften. They paid the bill once they finished eating, and Harkness took Jack to the same tech specialist as before.

She upgraded Jack’s phone in minutes, and as Harkness explained the particulars of the vortex manipulator and negotiated a price for repair Jack stepped away and dialed Signe’s number. He could hear the plastic casing creak under his grip as he waited for her to pick up. For a heart-stopping moment he thought she wouldn’t answer, then he heard the click. “Jack? Is that you?”

“Yeah. Signe, I—”

“Where are you?! Jack, you haven’t been home for two days now!” He could hear her carpet-muffled footsteps as she paced in the living room. “I’m worried, Jack. I’ve been trying to get a hold of you, but every time I call or text I just get a voice that says you’re ‘out of ambit.’ What’s going on?”

Jack heard the stress in her voice, and squeezed his eyes closed. “I’m so sorry, this is the first time I’ve had the ability to call you. I’m safe, so don’t worry about that. But… Signe, this is going to sound crazy, but I swear to you it’s the truth. I’m on another planet right now.” Ringing silence followed his statement, even the whispers silent, and he barreled forward. “I’m with a man called Jack Harkness. He’s a time traveler, and I needed his help. There was an alien in our house, a Weeping Angel, and I didn’t know how to get rid of it so I called him—”

“A weeping angel? You mean like Doctor Who?” Her voice hardened, showing the steel resolve that he loved her so much for. “Jack, this isn’t funny. What is going on? Where are you, really?”

“Did you call Dan and Phil?” He ducked into a secluded alcove just off the concourse and started pacing himself, feeling her agitation over the phone almost as keenly as if she was standing in front of him.

“Yes, and they spouted the same bullshit!” Under the steel, she sounded close to tears. “Jack, where are you?” At a loss for what else to do, Jack took a selfie with the star-studded night sky of Rirhath B in the background and sent it to her. There was a long pause as she received the message, saw the picture of him trying for a smile against an alien starscape. “Jack? What is happening?”

“…Please, Signe, trust me. I’m telling the truth. My phone is upgraded for interplanetary communication now; I literally could not call you until five minutes ago.” He sat down on a couch in the alcove as the stars pulsed and sang silently above him. “Skype Mark, ask him about the Doctor and the TARDIS. Tell him that I told you to ask. Dan will back him up; it’s how they got together. This is all real, I swear. I didn’t want to tell you what really happened with Mark and Dan because you’d think I was crazy, but when the Angel showed up in my recording room, I didn’t have many options.” One of the many convenient **You Are Here** displays scattered throughout the Crossings caught his eye and he peered at the dot marking Rirhait B on the galactic scale. The translator took a moment to decipher the glyphs on the map. “The technology that Harkness used to teleport us and the Angel off Earth malfunctioned and stranded us on a planet in the…Sagittarius arm of the Milky Way. I should be home late tomorrow or early the next day.”

For a long moment he couldn’t hear anything but her breathing, and he could see her in his mind’s eye, standing in their living room in front of the fireplace with one arm wrapped around her middle as she processed all the information he’d just dumped in her lap. “Okay. I’ll trust you on this for now. But I need proof, Jack. Solid proof.”

He managed a choked laugh. “Sure thing, Signe. I can do that for you.”

“And what else?”

“Er. What?”

“What else, Jack? I can hear it when you’re not telling me everything. You always end every sentence like there’s more you want to tack on.” Her voice was warmer, steadier, and held traces of soft humor.

Jack jumped up from the couch and started pacing again. “I’m not sure if this is the right time.”

“Spit it out, Sean.”

He winced. Real name; she meant business. It would be so easy to lie, to insist that it was nothing. He was already in so deep that it would be easier to just swim down into outright denial.

But that wouldn’t be fair. Not to her, not to Harkness, not to him. And he was already walking the edge of a cliff with Harkness, ready to topple into the unknown or step back onto solid ground. “…You remember that crush I had on Mark? I’m in a similar situation with Harkness. But it’s bad, Signe. Really, really bad. It’s not goin’ away, and it’s not just physical. I love you, but I think I love him too. Or, I think I could, given enough time.” He laughed again, but his voice was grating as he struggled for humor in the face of his emotional conflict. “I can’t think straight around him ’cause all my blood rushes south. But he wants to meet you. He…he’s willing to try for a poly relationship, if both of us are.”

Even across light years, he could practically see her frown. “He’s willing to try with both of us?” Jack stammered, trying to come up with a response, when she cut him off. “Put him on. I want to talk with him.” He stood there in petrified silence, then managed to choke out a terrified agreement and motioned Harkness to come over.

The man hurried to him from his polite distance and Jack thrust the phone at him. “She wants to talk to you.”

Harkness’s eyebrows climbed up to his hairline, but he took the phone with steady hands. “Jack Harkness.”

“Are you the man my boyfriend is crushing on?” There was a pause as Harkness tried to come up with an appropriate response, somewhat taken aback by the blunt question. “I’m Signe, by the way.”

Well, that was as good a place to start as any. “It’s good to meet you Signe, though I wish it was face to face rather than over the phone. And I’m the man your boyfriend is attracted to, yes.” He frowned. “Look, do you want me to leave him alone? Because once I get him home to you, I will disappear from your lives if it means that you’re both happy.”

Signe arched an eyebrow as she sat down on the couch in the living room. “Actually, I was wondering why you’re willing to try to make a polyamorous relationship work with an established couple when you’ve only met one of the two people involved.”

Harkness laughed softly in wry amusement. “I care for your boyfriend, ma’am, more so than I do many other people. There’s only two other people who I would have risked this much for, and one of them is…not how he used to be. The other is dead.” He smiled sadly, memories of Ten and Ianto flickering through his mind’s eye before he put the memories to rest again. “I’m afraid my line of work is dangerous, and Jack got tangled up in it when he tracked me down so he could blackmail me into helping him bring Mark and Dan home. He’s pretty resourceful.”

Typing sounded in the background. “Oh, he’s pretty, alright. You’re Jack Harkness of TORCHWOOD? I’m well aware that your line of work is dangerous; that’s why I want to know your intentions towards Jack. I know where he stands on this, but I barely know anything about you.” Her voice went hard. “I am very protective of my boyfriend, and if you just want a one-night stand then I don’t want you to have anything to do with him. If you feel like you could come to care about him as much as I do, then we can talk. So which is it?” She paused. “And don’t call me ma’am; I’m not that old. Signe is fine.”

Harkness frowned, thinking over his response. “…I don’t want a one-night stand. If that’s what he wants, then I’ll take it, but I would rather have the chance to make an emotional connection with him. I feel like I could love him, given half a chance. But I don’t want to ruin his relationship with you.” He smiled wryly. “I care for him too much to want to hurt him like that.”

Signe hummed in thought. “And you’re willing to get to know me? A poly relationship isn’t one person caught between two others; it’s a trinity where everyone works together and communicates.”

The time traveler blinked, taken aback by her approach to the topic. “Believe me, I know that. Poly relationships are normal where I’m from, even if they aren’t the majority.” He sat down beside Jack, who was fidgeting nervously as he tried to guess at the half of the conversation that he couldn’t hear. “I would like to get to know you, because you caught his heart. I don’t think he could fall in love with just anybody, and even with the little that I know of you, you strike me as being a kind, funny, and good person. Just like him.”

Signe smiled. “You’re one hell of a sweet talker, Mr. Harkness.”

“I’m just calling it as I see it. And please, call me Harkness. I would ask you to call me Jack, but that would be confusing at this point.”

She laughed, bright and clear like a bell, and Harkness grinned. “Alright. I like you enough to give you a shot. Please put Jack back on the line, Jack; just make sure he knows it’s not a one-time thing.”

His grin widened. “With pleasure, milady.” He held out the phone to Jack, who grabbed it and held it up to his ear.

“Signe?”

“Go for it.”

Jack’s eyes went comically wide. “Huh?”

“Go for it, Jack. I think we can make this work.” Her grin was audible as Jack floundered for words. “You still owe me one hell of an explanation for this entire situation when you get home, but for now I want you to follow your heart. I want you to be happy, not pining after what might have been.” Her grin softened into a loving smile. “Have fun, Jack. I’ll see you tomorrow. Love you!” She hung up, leaving Jack staring at the phone in disbelief.

“…So, she seems nice.” Harkness set a gentling hand on Jack’s shoulder as he jumped. “Calm down, tiger. What did she say?”

Jack felt his face burning, and had to try a few times before he got the words out. “She… She said to go for it.”

He blinked. “Just like that?”

“Just like that. I love her dearly, but God, she can be blunt sometimes…”

Harkness smiled and caught Jack’s chin, cutting him off with a gentle kiss. He cupped the back of Jack’s head as he felt fingers clutching at the front of his shirt before he pulled away to look down at the Youtuber. “You still want this?” Jack flushed and nodded. “Then let’s get back to our hotel.” He pulled Jack to his feet and led him to the hospitality wing. “I should tell you, I knew what she’d decided to do. She told me to go ahead, as long as you understood that this isn’t a one-time thing.” He cupped Jack’s face, the two of them standing outside their room. “Is that okay with you?”

Jack took a deep breath, feeling like he was standing on a cliff where he could stay as he was and be safe, or where he could take a leap of faith and fly. “…Yeah.” He blushed and leaned into Harkness’s touch. “That’s more than okay with me.” He leaned up and met Harkness’s kiss, fumbling the door open and letting his companion steer him inside.

The door shut behind them and Harkness guided Jack into the room after the younger man dropped his backpack just inside the door, both of them losing their shoes during the journey. The time traveler shrugged out of his coat, laughing softly between gentle kisses and pulling Jack close. He felt tentative hands exploring his shoulders and arms and returned the touches as he nipped and sucked at the pulse in Jack’s throat. The younger man moaned softly and tilted his head back, shuddering as he felt hands dipping under the hem of his shirt and tracing along his lower back. Jack dragged his nails over Harkness’s shoulders and was rewarded with a full-body shudder.

Harkness pulled back to stare down at him, his pupils blown wide and his face and throat flushed. “Do you trust me?”

Jack swallowed thickly and scoured his soul one last time for any reason to stop this. He found nothing. “With my life.” He let Harkness push him down, and the whispers in his mind quieted for a time.

~*~*~*~

Jack woke up unbelievably sore. He groaned in pain as he tried to move, then spent the next minute or two plotting revenge by increasingly ridiculous means. By the time he managed to scrounge together the energy to sit up, Harkness was waiting with a hot drink. “Here. This should help.”

He grudgingly accepted and took a sip, tasting…mocha. Really, really sweet mocha. It was actually a lot sweeter than what he was used to, but there was enough of a difference in inherent taste that he knew what he was drinking wasn’t actually coffee. Even so, it seemed to have a similar effect, so he nursed his drink as he heard water running in the bathroom. Eventually the water shut off and Harkness came back into the bedroom shirtless. Jack flushed in embarrassment as he saw the bright red scratches decorating his torso and an unmistakable bite mark on his shoulder. “Did I do that?”

Harkness chuckled and took the cup from him, setting it on the bedside table. “Yes, you did, and I loved every minute of. Can you stand?” Jack’s response was to hiss in discomfort as he tried to swing his legs out of bed, prompting Harkness to gently scoop him up. “Come on.”

“What am I, six? I can walk!” Jack protested more out of indignation than anything. He felt like he could walk, but his legs would be shaky as hell.

“Sure you can.” Harkness smiled, just a hint of a leer curling his lips up. “You’ll have a hard time standing in the shower, and I don’t want to explain to Signe that you hit your head and need to stay an extra day for medical treatment.” The younger man grumbled, but let himself be carried to the bathroom and settled into a tub of hot water. He groaned as the heat sank into his muscles, melting away the soreness and stiffness. “Better?”

“Yeah...” Jack sighed in pleasure as he leaned back against the wall of the tub. “Wait. Didn’t we have a shower stall yesterday?”

“I changed the settings.” Harkness stood up and went back into the bedroom, returning with the not-mocha.

“Of course you did.” Jack sipped at the frothy beverage Harkness had retrieved for him, savoring the caffeine rush. “…So. Last night was…way better than I expected. I thought it was gonna be kind of uncomfortable, what with me never bein’ with a man before.” He flushed. “You kinda blew my mind.”

Harkness laughed, sounding entirely too smug. “I’m flattered.” He grabbed a soapy washcloth and started washing away the sweat and fluids from Jack’s skin, raising an eyebrow at the sputtered protest. “Something wrong?”

“I can-!”

“Yes, I know, you can bathe yourself.” He leaned down and kissed the crown of his head. “Humor me, though.” Jack grumbled, but subsided. It wasn’t like it was doing any harm, and the whispers were…surprisingly quiet. It felt like something in his brain had finally clicked into place.

Harkness cleaned him off as Jack finished his drink, taking the mug from him when he was done. “You good to wash your hair? I was never good at doing that for other people.” Jack nodded and ducked his head under the water, quickly scrubbing his hair clean. He managed to climb to his feet with minimal shakiness and drained the tub before turning on the showerhead to rinse off completely. Harkness gave him some privacy as he went to finish get dressed, having showered before Jack woke up. He was packing his bag when he heard a shout from the bathroom and dropped everything, rushing in. “Are you okay?!”

The green-haired man stared at him from the mirror. “Dude! You covered my neck in hickeys!” Jack turned back to his reflection, trying to see how bad the marks were as Harkness relaxed. “How hard did ya bite me?”

“Uh, pretty hard. Sorry, if I’d known you didn’t want any marks, I wouldn’t have been so rough with your skin.” Harkness snickered as Jack grumbled, brusquely toweling his hair dry. “You’ll still be able to record videos. You’ll just have to wear a turtleneck or a scarf.”

“Yeah, like my fans won’t notice—” He dropped the towel as the blood drained from his face. “Oh god. It’s been two days with no videos and nothing to explain why. I didn’t even have anything queued.” He rushed through the rest of his routine as best he could before hurrying into the bedroom to pack. “Do we have enough time to get my laptop upgraded before our gate is ready?”

Harkness nodded. “Easily. We’ve got seven hours yet. We can go get the rest of your tech upgraded so you can record a quick video and tell the community whatever you want to.” Jack nodded and threw everything back in his backpack.

“Awesome. Let’s go do that now.” The two of them did a quick sweep of the room and adjoining bath to make sure they hadn’t missed anything, and Jack swept the human-friendly toiletries into his bag for Signe. They checked out before heading to the beleaguered tech specialist they’d visited the past couple of days. She pointedly set Jack’s laptop to the side of her workstation and then turned back to her work on the vortex manipulator. Jack thanked her with one of his brightest grins and she gave him a very slight smile, mollified by a thankful customer. The Youtuber looked around as they left her to her work, and blinked when he spotted a duty-free shop. “Hey, can we go look in there? Signe wanted solid proof that I was telling the truth about being off-planet, and I wanted to get her something that wasn’t hotel soap anyway.”

Harkness laughed. “Sure. I’ll let you know if anything you’re considering shouldn’t be brought to Earth, but we can definitely have a look.”

The two of them made their way to the duty-free shop, and Jack looked around with unabashed interest. After about an hour of browsing he bought a floral candle that gave of the flower’s natural scent of chocolate chip and butterscotch cookies when it was burned, much to his astonished delight, and three pieces of jewelry: two silvery necklaces, one with a short chain and the other with a long chain, both of them with pendants of dark stone that seemed to hold slowly-swirling galaxies at their hearts, and a matching woven chain mail bracelet studded with the same type of gem. He’d been ready to bypass the jewelry display when the pieces caught his eye so suddenly it felt like something physically grabbed his arm and held him in place. He asked the cashier, who told him that the jewels were called _cehlaer-jorreh_ , or literally _galaxy stone_. Jack picked out a necklace for Signe and the bracelet for himself, then waited until Harkness was distracted with a book and slipped a simpler necklace that matched Signe’s into his basket, like something he would get for a close friend.

Or like something he’d get for a lover.

He quickly brought his items to the counter and paid for them with a tap of his debit bracelet, slipping everything into his backpack as Harkness came over empty-handed. “You got everything?”

“Yeah. Can we go get breakfast?” As if on cue, Jack’s stomach growled.

Harkness grinned and tangled his finger’s with Jack’s, squeezing his hand. “Sure thing, babe.”

They found a small café and had breakfast with a strong tea that tasted of lavender-infused earl grey, people-watching from the windows. Harkness pointed out different types of aliens, and where they were likely to have originated in the universe. Jack suddenly grabbed Harkness’s arm. “What about them?!”

Harkness blinked and peered at the two people weaving their way through the crowd: a young man and young woman, both in blue jeans and light jackets over T-shirts. The girl shook out her charm bracelet and a book materialized in her hand. She flipped it open and showed it to her companion as though to prove a point, the two of them bickering amicably. “They’re human. Not unheard of in this part of the galaxy, which is why you haven’t been turning heads.”

“But how are they here? Are they time travelers?”

The older man frowned, examining the clothing styles. “No, they’re from your time. They’re probably wizards.”

There was a beat of silence, and then Jack frowned at him. “Ha ha. Very funny. Really, how are they here? Magic isn’t real.” Harkness looked away and sipped his tea as the young man pulled a hardcover book to match the young woman’s out of thin air, making Jack’s mouth fall open in shock. “No way.”

“Don’t think of it as magic so much as a very obscure form of science. One that operates under very specific conditions that certain people are very good at bringing about.”

Jack squinted at the book title, shoving the lenses of the translator up on his forehead and out of the way. “So You Want to be a Wizard?” The whispers swelled, then subsided. He was finally getting used to them, and they no longer seemed so intrusive.

Harkness smiled into his cup. “Well done. Not many people can see even that much.” His sneaking suspicion at the beginning of their journey was rapidly being confirmed; the Weeping Angel had been a catalyst for something bigger, something that may have started even before the creature found Jack, but he wasn’t about to say anything. If he was wrong, then there was no point in bringing it up. There were plenty of uninitiated people who were sensitive enough to be in on one of humanity’s better-kept secrets. If Jack was one of those people, then he’d stumble into the truth sooner or later. But if Harkness was right, if his suspicions were valid… Well, if he was right, then he wasn’t an Advisory, and Jack would probably need one to answer all his questions.

The Youtuber glanced at him in confusion as the pair of humans disappeared in the crowds. “What? The title is right there. How can people not-?” The chronometer on the wall behind Harkness caught his eye, and he frowned. “Hey, we need to pick up my laptop and your vortex manipulator in about ten minutes.” He pushed the lenses of the translator back into place before wolfing down the last of his food.

The older man nodded and drained his tea, waving his microchipped hand over the scanner embedded in the table to pay for their meal. “Let’s go, then.” He didn’t bring up how Jack hadn’t needed the translator to read the alien symbols on the chronometer.

The tech specialist was waiting impatiently when they arrived and Jack slipped his translator lenses back up the bridge of his nose as he thanked her, paying for his laptop and the vortex manipulator as Harkness stayed well out of the way. They retired to an indoor park so Jack could record a quick video against a neutral background with minimal ambient noise.

The Youtuber took the opportunity to send a quick text to Dan, letting him know that he and Harkness would need a place to stay for a bit when they arrived in London. He got a welcoming response and removed his translator before he got the webcam going, deciding to forgo his normal intro. “Hi, guys. I’m recording from my laptop webcam, so if the quality of this video sucks, that’s why.” He paused for a moment to collect his thoughts. “…This is going to be really short, because I need to go soon. Um, I’m sorry I’ve been missing in action these past couple of days. Something big came up, an’ I had to deal with it right away. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to queue any videos to fill in the gap, but I promise you, I’ll be back on schedule by this time tomorrow. I hope ya haven’t all been too worried.” He grinned wryly at the camera, a light pink blush dusting his cheeks as he noticed Harkness watching him with a definite fondness in his eyes. “I’m fine, everything’s fine, and things should be back t’ normal soon. Thanks for watching, and I’ll get back to the gaming videos tomorrow.” He ended the recording and grimaced when he saw just how obvious the hickeys on his neck were, but there was nothing he could do about them. He’d just remind the fandom that every detail of his personal life wasn’t their business if they got too loud about it. He leaned back against the wall as the file rendered and uploaded to YouTube, quietly marveling at the ability to send so much data so quickly over a distance that traversed lightyears. When it finished rendering and uploaded he shut his laptop and leaned against Harkness, who had sat down beside him once he’d finished recording. “Hopefully I won’t come back to millions of messages on Tumblr and Facebook and Twitter asking where I went. Hell, half of Tumblr is probably convinced that I’ve died.” He laughed softly as Harkness stroked his hair. “…Thanks. For, you know, guiding me through everything. I wouldn’t have made it without you.”

“You don’t have to thank me. I wanted to help you.” He chuckled. “Besides, it’s interesting to see the videos you make from the other side of the screen. You’re so open with who you are, and that really comes through.”

“…How long have you been part of the community?”

Harkness looked somewhat embarrassed, which immediately piqued Jack’s interest. “…Since we first parted ways. I wanted to know more about you, and I just…got hooked. You’re a good entertainer.”

Jack beamed. “Why, thank you.”

The two of them fell into comfortable silence, simply enjoying each other’s company. Eventually the time came for them to go home, and they headed to the gate. The attendant swiped their chips and sent them through, and they stepped from Rirhath B into a secluded alcove in the London Underground. It was odd, how easily they stepped from the fantastic to the mundane, and how much the past couple of days already felt like a dream. Jack staggered briefly as the whispers changed, gaining a sense of familiarity as he moved from an alien planet to Earth. Harkness steadied him, and the two men headed up the stairs to the street level, and went to check in with Dan and Phil. Jack called Signe on the way there and made sure she knew he was back on Earth and that the previous night had been _nice. Really nice. Signe, stop laughing_. Harkness looked at him in confusion as Jack broke down in a fit of giggles once he’d hung up, not quite able to believe what his life had become.

Dan and Phil were happy to see them and polite enough not to mention the marks all over Jack’s neck. Phil made snacks as Harkness checked his vortex manipulator, making sure that everything was working properly after the trip through the worldgate, and Dan told them that he and Mark had called Signe to corroborate their stories of their time the TARDIS. “It took a couple of hours, but we eventually convinced her that we were telling the truth. Mark showed her some of the…souvenirs he picked up along the way.” There was a pause as everyone present contemplated how much trouble it was worth to kick up a fuss over Mark bringing alien artifacts home, and ultimately decided that it wasn’t worth the fallout. “Anyway, she was skeptical, but accepting. You’re going to be answering a lot of questions when you get home.”

Jack scratched the back of his head. “Yeah, I know. There’s a lot to talk about.” He looked over at Harkness shyly, suddenly aware of the enormity of his decision to undertake a three-way relationship now that he was back on Earth and not a step away from being able to run off with Harkness and leave everything behind. The time traveler twined his finger’s with Jack’s, stroking his thumb across the back of Jack’s hand soothingly.

Dan smirked into his coffee mug. “Is this one of the things you need to talk to Signe about? She did mention that she had been thinking about approaching Mark with the possibility of an open relationship with you.”

Jack nearly spewed his coffee across the room. Phil yelped in surprise as Dan snickered. “What?!”

The young man looked at him innocently through his fringe. “What?”

“She… She told you that she and Mark-?”

“No, she never actually talked to him about it.” Dan sipped his coffee. “I think you should give her a bit more credit, though. She’s more open minded than you might think.”

“I give her plenty of credit,” Jack muttered, reaching for a cookie. “I… Look, she already knows. She gave her blessing, and we have a talk planned between the three of us.” He nibbled absently at the biscuit as Harkness noticed Phil peering at the vortex manipulator with interest and started explaining the basic mechanics. “How’re things with Mark?”

Dan fidgeted, his cheeks dusted pink. “He’s coming out soon, actually. Next month he’ll be in London.” He looked at Phil. “I just hope having Mark here for a week won’t mess anything up.”

The Irish Youtuber glanced between Dan and Phil before leaning close so he could speak without being overheard. “Have you thought about…?”

“No!” Dan shook his head frantically. “There’s no way that would ever happen. Phil isn’t judgmental, but I doubt he’d ever be willing to be a third. I mean, I thought there was something there before I got together with Mark, and sometimes I still get that feeling, but he’s too nice to even think about trying to join an existing relationship.” He looked at Jack, who was sitting there with a self-satisfied smirk. “What?”

“I was gonna ask if Phil would be willing to stay with a friend or visit family while Mark was here so it didn’t feel quite so much like sexile, but it looks like you have different thoughts on your mind.” He cackled as Dan turned red and leveled his most withering glare at him. Phil and Harkness looked over at them in confusion, only for Jack to wave away their concern as Dan jumped to his feet and went to hide in the kitchen, muttering about getting a drink. Harkness arched an eyebrow, but turned back to the vortex manipulator as Jack pulled up Skype on his mobile and sent Mark a message asking what he thought about Phil.

The Irish Youtuber spent the next hour playing matchmaker as Harkness finished running diagnostics on the vortex manipulator, looking up from his conversation with Mark only when his lover set a hand on his shoulder. “Time to go, Jack. The teleporter function is safe to use.”

He frowned as he climbed to his feet. “Okay, but you do know that all I need to cross between England and Ireland is my ID card, right? I’m a UK citizen, so I can travel between the islands without needing my passport and without risking the vortex manipulator.”

“What are we doing here, then?”

“Visiting friends. C’mon, I’ve got the ferry and train schedule pulled up on my phone. Your government ID should get you through no problem, right?” Harkness nodded, looking somewhat miffed that he hadn’t remembered the travel laws of the UK. They said goodbye to Dan and Phil, Jack with a muttered command in Dan’s ear to talk to Mark, before they caught a cab to the nearest tube station.

Other than a moment on the ferry where Jack was recognized and swarmed for selfies and autographs, the trip back to Ireland was uneventful. Harkness stayed to the side as Jack spoke with his fans, soothing worries about his unplanned absence from the channel and telling them that he’d been dealing with some personal things over in England. The scarf Phil loaned him hid the evidence of his night of self-discovery with Harkness.

Signe was waiting for them in the living room when they got home, and she hugged Jack like she never wanted to let go as soon as he was through the front door. She pulled back and looked him over for any sign of injury, arching an eyebrow as she touched the marks covering his throat. “Someone got a bit enthusiastic, I see.” Harkness had the grace to look sheepish as he apologized and promised to be more careful next time. Signe smiled and kissed Jack softly, then pulled away. “Sit down, both of you. I’ve got the tea ready.” So, they sat down in the living room and talked.

The three of them established boundaries and minimal time requirements, because there were some things that none of them had any interest in trying and Signe was not going to have Jack pining after Harkness for months at a time. Harkness ultimately suggested at least once-a-week visits to keep the three of them in regular contact, which everyone agreed was reasonable. There was more discussion as Harkness and Signe got to know each other while Jack hovered nervously and prayed that his two lovers would get along as well as he hoped. Fortunately for him, or perhaps unfortunately, the time traveler and the artist got along frighteningly well. More than once they cast him a look that he _knew_ , without a shadow of a doubt, meant he would be the subject of a joint effort. The prospect of being the focus of their combined attentions was both terrifying and thrilling.

Eventually Harkness had to leave and kissed both of them goodbye. Signe received a chaste peck on the cheek; Jack was dipped like a Hollywood starlet and kissed with such ardor that he was reduced to a shaky, panting mess. They saw him to the door and Jack hugged him tightly one last time, slipping the necklace that matched Signe’s into Harkness’s pocket with a note to make sure that his new lover knew why he had it.

His new lover. That was a thought he never thought would cross his mind while he was already in a relationship, but this seemed to be his current reality. The voices in the back of his mind felt like they were dancing with happiness.

When the time traveler was gone Signe had Jack sit down and tell her everything. He showed her what he’d brought back from Rirhath B, fastened the _cehlaer-jorreh_ necklace around her throat, and showed her how the universal translator worked. He blushed sheepishly when he found Harkness’s handkerchief in his pocket, but bore her gentle ribbing with good humor; his panic attack when this whole journey started felt like it had happened years ago. Jack steered the conversation away from that event, not wanting to worry his girlfriend. Instead he told Signe about the Crossings. (He pushed away the whispers in his head; this wasn’t the time for them to intrude.) The two of them laughed and put the Septic Sam plushie that had ridden with him to alien worlds in pride of place on the mantelpiece. He lit the cookie-flower candle and put on his own chain mail bracelet. Jack regaled her with the story of how he’d secured enough funds to get himself and Harkness home by winning an alien video game tournament on accident and with a heaping amount of beginner’s luck. He told her about finding the Weeping Angel, about seeing the Crossings for the first time, about all the different forms of intelligent life within their universe just waiting to be discovered.

He did not tell her about the human wizards that he’d seen.

He did not tell her about the whispers that constantly pressed at the edges of his mind since his fainting spell at the store a week before the Weeping Angel showed up.

That night after Signe had fallen asleep in Jack’s arms, he quietly slipped out of bed. The voices were too loud for him to sleep. He went to his recording room and booted up his computer, intending to get some editing done. Once he’d logged in he noticed a new file on the desktop: it was an electric blue Celtic knot that looked a bit like an embellished infinite symbol, and the text underneath it simply said ‘Manual.’

The whispers reached a crescendo, louder than they had ever been before and drowning out everything else except for that bright blue icon. Jack frowned and clicked on it, somewhat against his better judgement, and a text box popped up with a simple block of words. 

The whispers fell silent, leaving his mind echoing and empty.

Jack squinted and leaned close, reading the words out loud in the silence of the room. “In Life’s name and for Life’s sake, I say that I will use my Art in nothing but the service of that Life…” The world seemed to go unnaturally still around him, and as he finished reading the words they seemed to resonate across time and space. A sudden wave of exhaustion slammed into him, and he decided to go back to bed. He could edit in the morning.

The voices were back, but far quieter. They felt like a natural part of his mind, a constant stream of background information that he could finally understand.

Jack went back to Signe and fell asleep with the words of the Oath still ringing in his head. On the bedside table, his phone screen glowed with the Celtic knot before going dark.

Sean McLoughlin had successfully completed his Ordeal, and his name in the registry was backed by one of the strongest power ratings in the British Isles.

He was a wizard.

**Author's Note:**

> The Crossings on Rirhath B is from Diane Duane’s “Young Wizards Series,” because apparently I can’t keep myself from combining fandoms, especially when the Doctor has an unofficial cameo in the first appearance of Rirhath B in the books. The Crossings scene, which was supposed to be quick and result in a leap through a worldgate into London, kind of snowballed and became the main body of the fic. I recommend giving the “Young Wizards Series” a read; all of the books (and anything else by Duane, really) are mesmerizingly good.
> 
> The stone in the jewelry that Jack buys, the _cehlaer-jorreh_ , is a gem that I made up, but the words come from the Romulan language used in Star Trek. The block of text that Jack reads is the Wizard’s Oath, and the Celtic knot is the Wizard’s Knot. The Oath is as follows and belongs to Diane Duane, as does everything in the Young Wizards universe.  
>  _In Life's name and for Life's sake, I assert that I will employ the Art which is its gift in Life's service alone, rejecting all other usages. I will guard growth and ease pain. I will fight to preserve what grows and lives well in its own way; and I will change no object or creature unless its growth and life, or that of the system of which it is part, are threatened. To these ends, in the practice of my Art, I will ever put aside fear for courage, and death for life, when it is right to do so—till Universe's end._
> 
> Essentially, Jack now has magic so he can help people even more directly than he did before. Also, I think he’d make a very good wizard, at least as they’re portrayed by Diane Duane.
> 
> Please let me know what you thought! Comments and constructive criticism are always welcome!


End file.
